Practitioners and patients talk about chiropractic : a discourse analysis

Abstract

This thesis examines discourse within the chiropractic encounter and describes the interests and consequences of different discursive strategies. It is organised into three parts after I have first introduced the background to the study, exploring how our understandings of pain, health, illness and embodiment are co-constructed and what interests or motivations might be participant in those constructions. These understandings are situated within a cultural and historical frame of reference and I consider how constructs are socially and linguistically co-constituted.

In the first part I use discourse analysis to examine the analytic themes which emerged in interviews with chiropractors. I describe the employment of rhetorical devices which establish legitimacy as part of the ongoing construction of professional identity.  Talk regarding chiropractic and chronic pain is analysed within a critical framework that problematises the situating of patients as disembodied objects.

In the second part I again use discourse analysis to examine the lived experience of chronic pain patients attending chiropractic clinics. The use of narratives in the construction of self, identity and meaning is explored, and rhetorical devices analysed. The use of CAM is considered as a possible agentic strategy/attempt to recover the self and enable objectified bodies to become embodied subjects.

Finally, in the third part, I stand back from the study and focus on issues of reflexivity in the research, discuss specific implications arising from my analysis and make suggestions for further work.

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